


Echoes Down the Mountain

by Penstrokes_and_Daydreams



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gen, No Beta, One Shot, Suicidal Ideation, Survivors Guilt, most characters are mentioned not present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25063087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstrokes_and_Daydreams/pseuds/Penstrokes_and_Daydreams
Summary: After Abigail leaves him, before he leaves Pronghorn Ranch, John Marston finally has the space to break down.
Relationships: Abigail Roberts Marston/John Marston
Kudos: 26





	Echoes Down the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for thoughts of suicide/ self-harm. Spoilers for epilogue.

John, on days when he’s elbow deep in a cow, delivering a twisted calf, or driving steers to market, wishes he had been the one to die on that mountain. It’s not all out of that obsessive loyalty the members of the Van der Linde gang had for each other, or love for Arthur Morgan himself, though he still possesses both. Some of it is just the fact that the other man would have loved this life. He always talked about: when the gang had enough money, settling in on a ranch, honest work, simple living. John Marston was born by the gun and hoped to die by it too. Ranching, ‘honest living,’ it just felt like a slow bleed to him, like being shot in the stomach and left to rot.

They always used to say Arthur took after Hosea and John took after Dutch. They were right, he reckons. After all, wasn’t Arthur the one always telling him to slow down, to think, to use his head, and isn’t he the one missing the adventure of it all? Isn’t he the one with the ache inside that sets him pacing the cabin he lives in at night, full of energy that screams at him to not be forgotten? He doesn’t want to die in a bed, he doesn’t want to waste his life either. Here he is, working on another man’s land, staying in another man’s house, eating another man’s food. And that ain’t a life, it ain’t freedom.  
When he’s bitter he reckons Arthur would do better by Jack and Abigail, too. He’d been up his own ass about the man a couple times, with how he doted on Jack and stood up for Abigail, jealous of something John could have had at any moment. There was no doubt in his mind that if he’d have died, Arthur would have seen his family settled somewhere nice, someplace steady. Love could only get a man so far, but loyalty? Loyalty would do everything shy of crawl out of a grave, and he’d even seen it do that.

And John did love Abigail, so he felt guilty for thinking about how much he’d rather be in Arthur’s grave, or Lenny’s, Sean’s, Davey’s. There were so many graves he could be in, scattered from the Yukon to the Gulf, full of good and bad men alike. Now that the cabin is empty he thinks he can hear them. He isn’t used to the quiet, so the voices fill it for him. He hasn’t been alone in decades.  
Some days the worst part isn’t even the dead one, it’s the living ones. There isn’t a magical switch he can flip to make Dutch stop being the man who took him in, who kept him fed until he was old enough to do it himself, who was family. He hates him, could never forgive him for what he did, but he loves him too, and can’t forget him. He can forget his own birthday, the place of his birth, the names of their camps, but he can never shake what’s important and he wishes he could. They’d lost a gang member once who fell from a cliff and struck his head; he couldn’t remember the last ten years of his life, long before he was on the run, so they left him in a town at Hosea’s request to live his second chance. John wishes he could wash away the feeling of being left behind by the living and the dead alike. Because he has been, and now he’s alone, with everybody else gone.

It crawls in his skin when he tries to sleep. Some half-drunk Cajun in Lagras had told him about zombies once, creatures cursed to come back from the grave, mindless and ravenous. John feels mindless and ravenous most days, and most nights he has to keep his guns and knives locked in the trunk under the bed. All he wants is- is- He wishes he knew.  
The first thing he learned when his father died was not to stay in one place, so when the itch to move, to chase down whatever it is that leaves this emptiness inside him, hits him he makes a half-hearted excuse about a place of his own. Maybe it’s really a goal, a dream, where he can be something he knows he isn’t yet. Really, he’s just leaving. Maybe he’s a coward, too afraid to stay in one place and see what plays out in front of him without running away. Maybe he’s a coward, and that’s why he’s still breathing and better men have gone.  
John saddles up; loads all his earthly possessions on a horse and rides away. In a few days he’ll be in Valentine again, with Sadie. It feels good to ride towards something again, and even better to imagine riding with someone again. Everything goes well until it gets dark and he sets up camp under the stars and he’s never been to a church that he can recall, but it feels holy. The smell of smoke and the feel of the breeze, they’re things he loves.

Alone in what’s left of the wilderness, he breaks. He sits on his bedroll and sobs. He weeps for himself and the men he’s killed and the graves he keeps a map of in Arthur’s journal, in case he ever wants to visit. He weeps because of what he’s seen and what he knows, and for all his ignorance and the way it cost him- is costing him- Abigail and Jack. He weeps for a past that he’s lost and the path that he’s on. He’ll never stop, he knows, not hurting, not killing, not dying a little every day. He can’t stop. It’s been eight years and he’s dragged his family to Alaska and back and he’s so lost. He’s so angry.  
John cries himself to sleep and wakes up, tears down camp, and heads towards Valentine again. Something’s changed inside of him. It won’t fix him, and it won’t make him the kind of man Abigail wants, but from now on, he’s going to try. He may never forget, may never lose the anger or the sadness, but he is going to die one day and get his own tomb. So he figures in the meantime, he might as well live.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this mainly because John is a character with a lot of trauma and a lot of emotions that he bottles up inside, and sometimes he seems to just explode with it, then immediately bottle it back up. I also got the feeling that John enjoyed running with the gang a lot, and didn't really want to stop. I think he loves his family, but I think he loves excitement and being on the run, too. Without Abigail and Jack, I don't think he would have ever settled down. This makes him a really good foil to Arthur, who feels the opposite.


End file.
